Which Year do you think is the most important? "1942, the year that tried mens' souls"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/29/books/review/29COHENL.html?_r=0

IN Winston Groom's latest book on World War II, centering on America's war in the Pacific, he picks 1942 as the pivotal year, the prolonged turning point that determined the course of the war. But for those who want to understand what motivated him to write this account, the pivotal moment is Sept. 11, 2001. After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Groom explains in his foreword, it ''was easy to recollect that the tale of America in 1942 also began as one of shock, uncertainty and fear, beginning with Pearl Harbor.'' One point of retelling this well-worn history, then, ''is to recall for the reader what Americans can do when they get mad and set their minds to something.'' ''I write,'' he continues, ''to the average American reader, in hopes that he or she will take renewed pride in what our forefathers dealt with, and determined to accomplish, when faced with danger of the utmost severity.'' It is not surprising then that ''1942: The Year That Tried Men's Souls'' tends to read like a portable pep rally designed to fire up the home team for the next epic showdown. The ''Great Democracy'' versus the evil Axis -- or, more recently, the axis of evil. Of course, making history relevant with reference to current events -- particularly to draw in younger readers for whom even the recent past seems ancient -- is standard practice. But the best popular history writers are great storytellers, not proselytizers. They propel you back in time with smooth, compelling writing and fresh, revealing detail. Suddenly you are smack in the middle of it all, a fellow witness, linked emotionally to the people in whose company you find yourself. When Groom gets out of the way and simply tells the story, the time machine works, especially when he details the twists of battles. Military strategy has long captivated Groom, who is best known for the novel that inspired the 1994 film ''Forrest Gump'' but is also the author of 11 other books, including the well-regarded Civil War history ''Shrouds of Glory.'' He attended military school, in college took a special summer course on United States naval history with a teacher who had been a naval officer in the Pacific, and came of military age, as he puts it, in Vietnam, where he served as an infantry lieutenant. This background has given him a feel for military strategy and the rhythm of battle. He is able to explain lucidly why the day is won by superior weapons or command, reliable intelligence or, as Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur once said, ''just an eyelash.'' Groom offers a quick summary of the events leading up to war and a detailed account of the attack on Pearl Harbor before chronicling the pitiless Japanese advance through the Pacific -- Wake Island, Guam, Malaya, Singapore, Corregidor and more -- until it was stopped, after devastating losses on both sides, at Guadalcanal and New Guinea in early 1943. Today, with daily live interviews from Iraq and soldiers' access to Xbox video games, DVD's and Slim Jims, it can be hard to imagine the isolation, wrenching diseases and desperate shortages of food, water and medicine that G.I.'s endured, particularly during the war's early months, when the airplanes, guns and trained troops simply did not exist. Groom brings immediacy to the soldiers' wretched conditions and their military engagements. Unfortunately the narrative is frequently interrupted by clunky writing, incongruous asides and relentless cheerleading. The story is told in two dimensions with little of the ambiguity, nuance and complexity of real life. In Groom's account, the Japanese are ''wild-eyed,'' treacherous and unrepentant and their planning for Pearl Harbor ''diabolical.'' Their refusal to surrender is lunatic zealotry while the Americans' intention to fight to the end is heroic. Their imperial designs are part of a ''rapacious'' and cruel plot to ''control most of the world'' and squeeze America to death, while the colonial records of the Allies who already control it are glossed over. Following ''the tragedy of World War I,'' Groom writes, the ''Western powers had actually begun agreeing to return many (but of course not all) of their overseas possessions to the native inhabitants.'' From time to time, the occasional notes at the bottom of the page are annoyingly beside the point (in case you were wondering, gangs in Sicily used the term ''taking to the mattresses''). And cameo appearances by characters like ''our redoubtable spy 'Cynthia,' '' who used her ''explosive sexual charms'' to obtain the Italian naval code, and an American prisoner of war who escaped by tying together bedsheets have about as much substance as the stock figures in the flag-waver films Hollywood churned out in the 1940's to keep morale up at home. Readers will also have to make their way through some truly terrible writing. This is a book where teeth gnash, heads roll, straws are grasped, handwriting is on the wall, and people travel to hell and back. After detailing the Allies' desperate lack of food, water and ammunition in Hong Kong, Groom writes: ''The only thing they were not low on was courage.'' And when an American officer on Corregidor says he hoped his troops could rest and receive medical attention after surrendering, Groom writes, ''This last observation raised perhaps the grossest example of false hopes in the history of the world.'' Well, maybe. Unless you were hoping for a sophisticated account of the war in the Pacific.

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